Mega-Engineering Projects: The Oceans

Edwards Finance > General Engineering

Q. This will be the fourth Mega-Engineering idea cluster, this time let's talk about the Oceans. There are a lot of plans dealing with the oceans, especially artificial islands. See the Millenial Project for such a Mega-Engineering project. And remember the ideas behind OTEC (Ocean Thermal Energy Converter) have been around from the early part of the 20th Century. Creating artificial islands is one of the Mega-Engineering Projects dealing with Oceans. Other ideas I can think of are the following. * Under-sea colonies. Artificial islands could help with mining the ocean floor, but having the actual city on the Ocean floor would make it closer to the minerals. Of course, there is an added danger. But I see no greater danger in Under-sea colonies compared to space stations. * Mega sized Submarines. Anyone else remember SeaQuest? The show itself wasn't that good, but the idea of a super sized Submarine is interesting. Similar to the under-sea colonies, except it will move around. Good for researching migrating whales and what not. * Iceberg ships. An idea I also mentioned in the Fertile Sahara thread. Oddly, I remember a SeaQuest with this. They could provide fresh water to dry regions. Problem is that with the 'global warming' coming on, people would be against moving ice away from the Poles. But if we had Global Cooling . . . * Warming-Cooling Regions of the Ocean. This would be a way to manipulate the weather on a mega-scale. Changing the temperatures in different region would be a like butterfly setting off an atomic bomb. IIRC, there are treaties in place to prevent this from happening. * Strange Ideas. Domesticaion of Octupi, training them to mine for us. Dolphins in war have already been tested. The search for the Giant Squid could be called a Mega-Engineering Project. Same with a search for Atlantis, if you belive it's in the Oceans. * Any others?

A. There are quite a few examples of this, and this has been done. The Japanese did so for an airport they needed. The dangers would be different ones, pressure rather than vacuum, and one of the big problems in space - radiation - is solved. Also, as it currently costs $10,000 per pound of payload, you have that problem licked too. The problem I think is is why? Not that I am against it, but would it be more economical to live down there? Aquaculture might work, but not the sea floor region, it needs to be near the surface or in shallow waters. The only reason I could see one would be for scientific reasons, perhaps one built near a hydrothermal vent. Much more practical than an undersea colony, which if the mine plays out, is suddenly fairly useless. Would be the only way we are ever going to see giant squids alive I think. Churchill wanted to construct an iceberg aircraft carrier in WWII, but it never came through. I remember seeing an alternate history website which talked about this. This would be a BAD thing! I don't think octopi could be domesticated, at least in the sense of training them. You might farm them though. As for dolphins, I really don't see what they could do that would require them. I don't know. Maybe neutrino catching projects? Use vents as a power source?

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